Brendan "The Dark" Hughes, a one-time Irish Republican Army commander who broke with former comrades when they pursued peace in Northern Ireland, was cremated yesterday after a funeral that briefly unified both sides of the split.

Hughes, 59, died Saturday. He had spent his final years criticizing Sinn Fein leaders for accepting Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord and said that while the IRA should not return to violence, its political leaders made people suffer needlessly for decades when the British government had offered similar peace terms as long ago as 1975.




Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Fein, helped carry Hughes' coffin outside St. Peter's Cathedral in Catholic West